Going Coastalhttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com
Bill TrotterMon, 23 Feb 2015 23:29:33 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Instagramming the winter of 2015http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/23/weather/instagramming-the-winter-of-2015/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/23/weather/instagramming-the-winter-of-2015/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 23:29:33 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=910In the two decades I’ve lived in Maine year round, I’ve never experienced a winter like this one. Snow, snow and more snow. The dug trenches in my front yard that connect the house to the driveway and street rise over my three year-old daughter’s head. My arms and back ache. The scoop on my snow shovel has snapped in two.

But along with these inconveniences has come the novelty of seeing things not usually seen: snow piled up high on cars, in entryways, and against doors; dense rows of icicles the length of spears; streets narrowed by towering walls of snow; thick coats of white powder covering the tree limbs. The impact the severe weather has had on the landscape has been striking.

I often carry a camera when I leave the house, but I always take my phone. The past few weeks, I’ve taken many photos with my phone and posted them to my Instagram account. In an attempt to convey what this winter has been like in eastern coastal Maine, I’ve copied several of those images here. These pictures were captured in Bar Harbor, Columbia Falls, Eastport, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Lubec, and Machias.

I admit, I have been thinking a lot about warm weather lately. More and more I am looking forward to not having to don boots, coat, hat and gloves just to walk out to (and dig out) the mail box. But one day my memory of the record-breaking winter of 2015 will fade and, when that happens, I hope I’ll still have these images to remind me of what it was like.

According to the National Weather Service, Maine’s Queen City has set a new high mark for snowfall over a 31-day period – and it did so in only 28 days.

Since Jan. 24, 60.8 inches (a little more than 5 feet) of snow have fallen in Bangor, surpassing the 59.4 inches that fell in Bangor between Feb. 1 and March 3, 1969. Records for Bangor have been kept since 1926, according to the federal agency.

But don’t get too hung up on that 60.8-inch measurement. The 31-day period won’t come to a close until Feb. 23, which is this coming Monday. According to weather forecasters, Bangor (along with Hancock and Washington counties – including Eastport) could get another “seven or more inches” of snow between Saturday evening and early Sunday afternoon.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/20/weather/month-long-snow-record-set-in-bangor/feed/0Video: snowbound motorists in Eastporthttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/17/island-life/video-snowbound-motorists-in-eastport/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/17/island-life/video-snowbound-motorists-in-eastport/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 18:29:44 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=894Here’s a video of what Deep Cove Rd. in Eastport looked like yesterday afternoon, after the snow stopped falling from the sky but while the winds were still howling. This section of road is at the southeastern end of the municipal airport, where the wind was roaring down the runway before it blew over the road.

It took me more than three hours to drive from Ellsworth to Eastport yesterday – a trip that under normal conditions takes about two hours and 15 minutes. The drifting conditions on Deep Cove Rd., which is a dead-end road and is not heavily used, were the worst I saw yesterday but other roads were not great. Route 1, the main highway along the coast, was narrowed down to one lane just west of Machias due to drifts blowing into the southbound lane and, where the road crosses the Middle River, visibility was about five feet when I drove through there around noon. Conditions were better last night when I drove home, after the winds had subsided a bit.

Chris & Ashley Scott, whose vehicles were stopped ahead of me on Deep Cove Rd., said a tow truck driver was coming to help them out. They seemed to be taking their situation in stride, with a combination of amusement and awe. The wind was blowing like crazy and the whipping snow made it hard to see, so we didn’t talk long. I tried to kneel next to their van to get away from the prolonged blast of wind, but when that didn’t work I stumbled back to my car.

A plow truck pulled up and I drove off back toward downtown Eastport. Chris has since posted about the experience on social media, so they seem to have made it out OK.

This video is a good reminder of why officials recommend that people do not drive in significant snowstorms. The storm was over yesterday when I set out for Eastport and, though the roads were mostly in decent shape, I proceeded cautiously. Had the snow still been falling, and if conditions similar to this section of Deep Cove Rd. been more prevalent, I doubt I would have made it more than a few hundred yards from my house.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/17/island-life/video-snowbound-motorists-in-eastport/feed/0Stuck Hinckley jet boat in downtown Boston goes viralhttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/12/island-life/stuck-hinckley-jet-boat-in-downtown-boston-goes-viral/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/12/island-life/stuck-hinckley-jet-boat-in-downtown-boston-goes-viral/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 16:31:48 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=881 If you wanted to draw attention to your (very) high-end consumer product, Boston’s Financial District is not a bad place to do it.

I am not accusing the truck driver or anyone else involved of doing it on purpose, but Hinckley Yachts got a lot of publicity and social media attention in Boston yesterday when a truck hauling one of the company’s famed jet-powered picnic boats got stuck against a snowbank while en route to the New England Boat Show at the city’s convention and exhibition center.

Hinckley’s picnic boats, which vary in size, cost in the range of half a million to more than $2 million when new while used boats often fetch a price of a few hundred thousand dollars, according to used yacht listings posted online.

For about an hour, the brand new 43-foot Talaria model boat sat blocking the intersection of Lincoln and Summer streets while workers and volunteers tried to free the boat and move it along. The incongruous image of the luxury yacht wedged against a large pile of snow served as a reminder of what kind outdoor leisure opportunities may be possible should the icy claws of winter ever release their snowy stranglehold on New England.

According to the Boston Herald, the city has gotten more than 70 inches of snow in the past 30 days, breaking the 1978 record of 58.5 inches. Several local snowfall records in Maine also have been set since late January, with many towns getting five feet or more. Eastport broke a statewide record for snowfall over 10 days with 76 inches from Jan. 24 to Feb. 2.

Multiple Boston media outlets reported Wednesday that the picnic boat is a new acquisition of Robert A. Vincent, president of Worcester-based David Clark Co., which makes high-tech commercial communications equipment. The boat is named “Maggie Mae” (not to be confused with the Rod Stewart song “Maggie May”) and will be based in Jamestown, R.I.

Vincent told WBZ, the CBS affiliate in Boston, that he was kind of nervous to have the boat stuck and blocking traffic downtown.

“They had to bring it in today in between snowstorms,” Vincent told the TV station. “I feel bad that the boat and trailer caused a traffic jam in Boston.”

Phil Bennett, vice president of the Southwest Harbor yacht manufacturer, told Boston.com that the company has not been put off by the incident or the harsh winter that has contributed to it.

“People think because we have snow we don’t do anything,” Bennett told the news website. “Those of us that live and work here—we’re building and moving boats right through the winter.”

Here’s a video of the incident the Boston Herald posted on YouTube:

Top photo credit: Jay Batson/WBZ. Follow them on Twitter at @jab and @cbsboston.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/12/island-life/stuck-hinckley-jet-boat-in-downtown-boston-goes-viral/feed/0Like Maine seafood? Then you should like the bitter weather, too.http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/02/fisheries/like-maine-seafood-then-you-should-like-the-bitter-weather-too/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/02/fisheries/like-maine-seafood-then-you-should-like-the-bitter-weather-too/#commentsMon, 02 Feb 2015 21:37:46 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=860It’s been a few years since my back and shoulders were this sore from shoveling snow.

Luckily for me, federal data indicates that my achiness is not just a result of getting older. January was an unusually bitter month for residents of coastal and central Maine.

According to the National Weather Service, January 2015 has been the snowiest and coldest month in the Bangor region in the past five years. Nearly 42 inches of snow fell in January, while the average temperature for the month was 14.5 degrees. That’s about 8 more inches of snow and 3 degrees colder than any month dating back to December 2010.

For the Portland area, the average daily temperature last month was 21.1 degrees – the coldest in the past five years, but only by a fraction of a degree. The 40.5 inches of snow Portland got in January was the second highest monthly total in that five-year period, behind only the nearly 50 inches the city received in February 2013.

In the past 10 days, both Bangor and Portland have had more than 30 inches of freshly fallen snow. And, this being Feb. 2, winter is far from over. Another foot of snow, give or take a few inches, is being predicted for most of the state by Tuesday morning.

So what does all this have to do with seafood? Think back to 2012, one of the most disruptive years Maine fisheries have ever had. Data from the National Weather Service shows just how mild the 2011-12 winter was.

Over four months, from December 2011 through March 2012, a total of 33.5 inches of snow fell in Bangor while Portland got 37.7 inches – less than what either city got just last month. The average temperature that winter was around 33 degrees in Portland and 28 degrees in Bangor – roughly double last month’s average in the Queen City. No snow fell in Maine between March 18 and 23, 2012, when the average daily temperature stayed above 50 degrees and, for a few days, was at least 60.

And as that winter wound down, the year got even weirder for fishermen.

The warm temperatures and relative lack of snow melt meant lobster molted a lot earlier than usual, which led to unseasonably high landings at a time of year when demand is typically low and the distribution chain is ill-prepared for handling large catch volumes. As a result, the price of lobster hit rock bottom and stayed there throughout the summer.

For elver fishermen, the weather meant a bonanza for their bottom lines, but it alarmed regulators and conservationists. The spring elver season usually starts out slow but the warm temperatures that year resulted in high volumes of baby eels clogging Maine’s tidal waterways on Opening Day. As a result, the cumulative volume of value of the annual 10-week fishery hit record highs.

Concerns about the sustainability of such catches, when the federal government is considering listing American eels as an endangered species, have since led regulators to limit the statewide catch in the lucrative fishery. The landings may have come down but, at prices of around $500 per pound, elver fishermen still are earning more for their catch than they ever did prior to 2011.

The species that may have suffered the most adverse impact from the warm weather in 2012, albeit indirectly, may have been softshell clams. Maine’s population of green crabs, which eat the clams, exploded in 2012 and 2013, decimating clam beds up and down the coast. Last year, after a harsher winter, the number of crabs along the coast seemed to to subside.

These three fisheries – lobster, elvers and softshell clams – are the three most valuable in Maine, comprising more than 75 percent all the marine fishing revenue in the state (with lobster alone making up nearly 70 percent). And in all three fisheries, the effect of mild winter weather on ocean temperatures was cited by scientists and industry officials as a primary factor on the upheaval the fisheries experienced in 2012 and, to a lesser extent, in 2013.

So despite the disruption and inconvenience of the frigid temperatures and precipitation, it may have some delayed benefit for the fishermen and marine species whose lives and livelihoods are shaped around annual fluctuations in the weather. A cold winter could help lead to normal, predictable seasons for them, which would help produce high-quality local seafood and a decent income for those who bring it in.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/02/fisheries/like-maine-seafood-then-you-should-like-the-bitter-weather-too/feed/1The Life and Death of a Small Theatre Ownerhttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/26/business/the-life-and-death-of-a-small-theatre-owner/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/26/business/the-life-and-death-of-a-small-theatre-owner/#commentsFri, 26 Dec 2014 12:00:27 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=837Dave Parsons, owner and operator of The Milbridge Theatre since 1978, died Dec. 11 at the age of 65.

I never met him. I have driven through the quiet coastal village and past the theatre plenty of times, and have wondered what it must be like to run a movie theatre in such a small town.

Reading about Parsons this past week has made me wish I had gotten the chance to visit his theatre and to ask him that question.

I learned of his death through the Facebook page of Reel Pizza Cinerama, a Bar Harbor movie house with great food that I’ve been to more times than I can remember. Chris Vincenty and Lisa Burton, owners and operators of Reel Pizza, knew Parsons and posted a moving eulogy to him on the Reel Pizza website that caught my attention. In it, they described him as “a true hero” and an icon in Downeast Maine.

“Dave was instrumental in the formation of our business from the very beginning [in 1995], setting us up with projection equipment, theater supplies and teaching us the secret ins and outs of the movie business that you might not have believed until this week with the revelations from the Sony Pictures hacking scandal,” Burton wrote. “In our early years, he would drive to Bar Harbor after his show let out, and work with Chris all night to fix a problem with the sound or projection, or to install a new piece of equipment, ferrying with him a truckload of spare parts, just in case.”

Parsons was adept at organizing other small independent cinemas in Maine to get discounted group deals on supplies, and he had a deep knowledge of film history and even obscure candy companies, according to Burton.

“We will miss those fascinating conversations,” she wrote. “Dave was one of the most kind, and most giving persons we have ever known, a dear friend who we will miss greatly, and a saint without whom Reel Pizza would never have survived its first year.”

Phil Duggan is a writer in Milbridge and a ham radio enthusiast who has written two articles about Parsons – one in the summer of 2013 for the now-defunct Down East Coastal Press, for which he interviewed Parsons, and another this month for the Machias Valley News Observer about the theatre owner’s death. Duggan spoke to me last week about Parsons’ death and emailed me the articles he wrote.

According to Duggan, Parsons was a trained magician who worked as part of a comedy act in St. Louis at some point before moving to Downeast Maine. He wrote that the former comedian met and befriended actors and entertainers whose photos hung on the theater’s walls. Beyond just being a film buff, Parsons also demonstrated a fair amount of technical and electronic acumen in keeping the movie theatre running.

For this month’s MVNO article, Duggan interviewed Paula Checker, a Milbridge resident who in recent years helped Parsons with the annual Codfish Relay Race, an event Parsons founded in 1983 that is part of the summer Milbridge Days festival.

“The theatre was not just a job to Dave, it was a love for the movies,” Checker told Duggan. “At one point in his life he wrestled a bear and has a scar from it. He ran a chuck wagon out west. He did so many completely different things than most other people.”

In the DECP article, Duggan wrote that Parsons told him he recently was feeling pressure from film distributors to convert the theatre to digital projection – a $50,000 project that Parsons said he could not afford.

Parsons lamented changes in the movie business and in society in general, and said the theatre had helped shape the town’s identity since it first opened in the late 1930s.

“Real estate people have sold a lot of real estate, and I’m helping them,” Parsons told Duggan. “Based on the fact that [Milbridge] has got stuff. It’s got a laundromat, it’s got a dentist, it’s got an eye doctor, it’s got a medical center, it’s got a pharmacy, it’s got a theatre. This has been part of what has helped the town be cohesive as a town, and been attractive to people.”

Duggan told me that what Parsons’ death might mean for the theatre has not been determined.

You can read a version of the Down East Coastal Press article that Duggan posted online here.

Parsons had no family to speak of, except for a brother who lives in New Hampshire, according to people who knew him. There is no formal obituary for Parsons and no funeral is planned, an official at a Milbridge funeral home who handled Parsons’ mortuary arrangements said last week.

Having spent a substantial part of my life in Hancock County, I think I know it fairly well. But I was surprised recently to see this blog post from real estate website Movoto, which declared that a zip code in Hancock County has the third-highest per capita income in the entire country.

I’ve known for several years that Harborside, a remote oceanfront village in the town of Brooksville, is a distinctive place. It is where “back to the land” pioneers Helen and Scott Nearing established their farm, now known as The Good Life Center (pictured above), in 1952 and where others emulate the Nearings’ vision of organic farming and low-impact living. Like many small coastal villages in Maine, sprinkled among the population are seasonal residents and others “from away” who are comfortable in their finances.

But I have never heard that Harborside has big-money, MDI-style mega-millionaires hiding behind the pea brush. Third-richest in the country? Ahead of certain zip codes in New York? Beverly Hills? Better heeled than wealthy neighborhoods or suburbs of Boston and Philadelphia? Uh, okay.

This warranted further investigation, even if only little. I did a quick scan through the list of property taxpayers in Brooksville, but found nothing extraordinary.

I then Googled “per capita zip codes” and found several similar lists – for highest-income places, zip code tabulation areas (kinda like a plain old zip code), highest-income zip codes based on dated census data, and even an animated YouTube video with zooming graphics and a funky-lite soundtrack.

Most of the lists I found made no reference to Maine at all. One longer list includes the village of Pemaquid in the Lincoln County town of Bristol and another long one includes Cape Elizabeth, but none made any other mention of Harborside. Fortunately, Maine makes no appearances on lists I found of the lowest-income locations in the country.

So, take from it what you will. I won’t say Movoto got its calculations wrong but, if you really want a whiff of the well-off, you might have better luck taking a summer stroll down Main Street in Northeast Harbor than driving down the remote country roads of Brooksville.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/20/island-life/the-good-life-or-la-dolce-vita/feed/0Parking efforts gone wrong in Bar Harbor attract online audiencehttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/11/island-life/parking-in-bar-harbor/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/11/island-life/parking-in-bar-harbor/#commentsFri, 12 Dec 2014 00:09:11 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=810For a state like Maine, which has a handful of small cities but is predominantly rural, you wouldn’t think parking would be a problem.

And throughout most of the state, it’s not. There are hundreds of mostly-small towns in Maine, not to mention unorganized territories, where people don’t have to think twice about where park their cars or trucks or even RVs. Just look off the side of the road and you’ll likely see a spot where you can leave your vehicle out of the way for at least a few hours.

But there are exceptions. In some urban centers, finding an available space can be a mild challenge, taking up a few minutes of your time. College campuses can be worrisome, as can compact tourist villages along the coast where millions of seasonal visitors drive through in the course of a few months.

In Bar Harbor, parking has become a spectator sport – in large part thanks to a Facebook page dedicated solely to photographs of bad parking jobs. Bar Harbor is one of the most visited destinations in the state between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and “Welcome to Bar Harbor’s Famous Parking Show” is a reflection of how high a premium there is on available parking during the summer.

Photos from other locales on or near Mount Desert Island frequently appear on the Facebook page, as do viral photos and videos of odd-parking jobs elsewhere on the planet.

[DISCLOSURE: I am an occasional contributor of photos to the Facebook group, which its creator has said is meant purely to be an entertaining outlet for local residents. Contributors are discouraged from being overly mean or holding grudges.]

Bar Harbor is not alone in this phenomenon, of course. But it does have one feature that most of the more heavily visited coastal towns do not: a sand bar out to a nearby island that is connected to the downtown grid of streets and which gets covered by water at high tide.

Given the combination of tides and unsuspecting visitors from out of state, you can imagine the kind of mishaps that ensue. But, thanks to YouTube, you don’t have to.

Below are some clips that some video-ready witnesses have posted on the site. Please keep them in mind next time you find yourself venturing out from the high tide line in any type of vehicle other than a boat.

This last one is a time-lapse video that show the bar being covered by the incoming tide.

]]>http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/11/island-life/parking-in-bar-harbor/feed/0Son who looted Brooke Astor’s fortune dies, leaving MDI property behindhttp://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/02/island-life/son-accused-of-looting-brooke-astors-fortune-dies/
http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/2014/12/02/island-life/son-accused-of-looting-brooke-astors-fortune-dies/#commentsTue, 02 Dec 2014 05:08:10 +0000http://goingcoastal.bangordailynews.com/?p=793Anthony Marshall sits in a wheelchair as he is pushed into a New York courtroom in June 2013 by his wife, former Mount Desert Island resident Charlene Marshall. Marshall died Sunday in New York City at the age of 90. (Reuters photo)

Brooke Astor’s son, who was convicted of looting his mother’s fortune after she sank into dementia, has died, according to The Washington Post and the New York Times.

Anthony Marshall, who like his famous mother was a seasonal resident of Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, passed away Sunday in New York City, media reports indicate. He was 90 years old.

Astor, who summered for decades at Cove End, overlooking the Northeast Harbor Yacht Club, died in 2007 at age 105. The year before her death, her grandson Phillip Marshall filed a court petition in Manhattan seeking to have his father removed as Astor’s legal guardian, accusing his father of looting Astor’s $180 million dollar estate for his personal gain.

As a result of the court petition, Anthony Marshall was removed as his mother’s guardian and was forced to return items that he had signed over to himself and his wife, Charlene Marshall, who lived in Northeast Harbor and got divorced from a local Episcopal minister two years before she married Marshall in 1992. Among the items Anthony Marshall had to hand over to his mother’s bank were paintings, artwork, family silver, diamond jewelry, and a 10-carat diamond ring.

As part of the 2006 settlement, Charlene Marshall was ordered to sign ownership of Cove End back to her husband, who had transferred the property to himself and then to his wife in 2003.

Prosecution of Anthony Marshall on charges of stealing from his mother were delayed until after his mother died, but Charlene was never charged. Former employees of Astor in Northeast Harbor, and prosecutors at Anthony Marshall’s subsequent criminal trial, suggested that Marshall acted on the behest of his wife.

In 2009, he was convicted of grand larceny, scheming to defraud and other charges, as was his former attorney, Francis X. Morrissey Jr. Both men were allowed to stay out from behind bars while they appealed their convictions. Last year, they exhausted those appeals without overturning their guilty verdicts. Marshall was sent to prison but was paroled two months later due to his own declining health.

Marshall was Astor’s son by her first marriage. She inherited her fortune from her third husband, Vincent Astor, and during her lifetime gave away $200 million of it to charitable and nonprofit causes, including some on MDI.

In her will, Astor gave hundreds of thousands of dollars more to College of the Atlantic, Asticou Azalea Garden, Northeast Harbor Library, Saint Mary’s and Saint Jude’s Parish, and to Maine Community Foundation, which is administering a fund established in Astor’s will for the benefit of local high school students.

Astor’s former real estate in Northeast Harbor has ended up in the control of her daughter-in-law. According to the town of Mount Desert’s online assessing database, Charlene Marshall is the owner or trustee of properties that have a total assessed value of more than $6 million – including Cove End.

As I indicated in a story I wrote recently about Ashley Bryan, I have pretty close personal ties to Islesford, Maine, a community on Little Cranberry Island, which is about a mile and a half off the southeastern shore of Mount Desert Island.

Islesford is a year-round community that sees its population swell significantly in the summer, from around 100 in the winter to maybe four times that number. I’ve never been a year-round resident, but for 40 years my family has been among the “summer people” who show up every June and stay through the end of August.

It is where I learned how to ride a bike, where my wife and I got married, and where I’ve experienced many of the more meaningful and memorable moments of my life. These days, I don’t get the chance to visit Islesford as much as I would like, but still I try to get out there a few times each year.

I consider myself lucky to have gotten the opportunity here in 2014 to learn and write about the lives of three of Islesford’s elder residents: Richard A. Alley, 87; Ashley Bryan, 91; and longtime seasonal resident Richard “Dick” Dudman, 96 (pictured in order above from left to right).

I wrote about Richard Alley for the BDN in May, when he finally was awarded the military medals he earned for his service in the Army during World War II.

I wrote about Ashley Bryan for the BDN earlier this month, when a retrospective exhibit on his life and career as an artist was moved from the Islesford Historical Museum to College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

And also this month, I wrote about Richard “Dick” Dudman – not for the BDN, but an introduction that I read during his Oct. 18 induction ceremony into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame.

I’ve known all these men for decades, but what has left an impression on me this year is what I had not known about them – the challenges they faced, the difficulties they overcame, and the lives they went on to lead.

My lack of prior familiarity with personal details of their lives is not surprising. What is surprising to me is that, by learning and writing about their extraordinary experiences, it has made Islesford even more special to me than it was before. Sometimes time changes things in good, unexpected ways.

I’m grateful I’ve gotten the chance to know these people personally and to write about them professionally, and I know there are others who could be added to this list. Writing these stories has been a reminder to me that many people, especially those who lead long lives, sometimes get to bear witness to amazing moments in history and to have a lasting impact on the lives of those around them.

I have a few more decades before I get to be 90 years old. If I continue to be lucky, and if I make it that far, I might accomplish a fraction of what Richard, Ashley, or Dick has.